No Reprieve For Old Hotel

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31084, 13 June 1966, Page 3

No Reprieve For Old Hotel

"The Press’’ Special Service AUCKLAND, June 12. The City Club Hotel in Shortland street will be demolished within the next few weeks. The Auckland City Council on Friday decided not to amend its district scheme to include the 118-year-old building in its list of historic places.

The hotel will make way for an 11-storey office building.

In a report which was unanimously adopted by the council, the town planning committee said that no good case had been made in submissions by the Historic Places Trust to wararnt classing the hotel as an historic place. “No associations with persons of historic note or events of historic significance have been brought forward,” the report said. “The contention that the unique facade of the building is of historic value is accepted but the test to be applied is whether it is reasonably possible to preserve this feature of the building.” After examining several methods—removal to another site, preservation of the entire building on the present site and keeping the front of the building on the existing site—the committee agreed that none was acceptable. The council instructed the city librarian, Mr R. Dutchie, to preserve the fullest possible record of the building, by photograph and sketches and to seek help from the Historic Places Trust and the owners of the site, the South British Insurance Company, Ltd.